


Time (C̶l̶o̶c̶k̶ Heist of the Heart)

by violeteyes



Category: Saints Row
Genre: F/F, brief but acute sexual content, four fingers two thumbs and four toes, just the one space wizard tho, paradox aversion, pierce is only there to get some pancakes, sean daley is not a good emotional role model kinzie, space wizards, the strange and fuzzy border between brunch and lunch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violeteyes/pseuds/violeteyes
Summary: It's The Boss! It's Kinzie! They're in space! They're on a collision course with wackiness!No, but really, they're pinballing through time and space on a hunt for a cosmic loophole that'll let them fix everything that went wrong when the Zin invaded Earth and trying to figure out how they feel about each other at the same. Difficulties ensue.
Relationships: Female Boss (Saints Row)/Kinzie Kensington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Time (C̶l̶o̶c̶k̶ Heist of the Heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSecondBatgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSecondBatgirl/gifts).



**ABOARD THE USS YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?**

**FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE USS MT. GATMORE.**

**FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE USS WEEDIAN.**

**FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE USS CHEST ROCKWELL'S ABILITY TO PICK UP ALL THESE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.**

**FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE USS FREE BOOZE AND EVERYONE GETS LAID.**

**FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE USS SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY.**

**REASONABLY ASSUREDLY FORMERLY KNOWN AT SOME POINT AS THE ZIN MOTHERSHIP.**

**THURSDAY.**

**BEFORE BREAKFAST.**

The halls of residence block 00-A, reserved for the Saints' inner circle and other dignitaries, were dim, with only emergency lighting along the floor guiding the hulking figure towards their goal.

Upon closer inspection, it would not appear that the figure themselves hulked so much as the fact that their entire person was housed in a bulky, metallic radiation suit, with a large cylindrical headpiece that obscured all of their features and measurements.

They paused outside a doorway, which briefly scanned this figure with a wavery yellow laser beam, then quietly blatted its dissatisfaction and returned to idleness.

"...seriously?" the figure grumbled to themselves, reaching for the small compubox on their wrist.

On the other side of the door, Saints super-hacker Kinzie Kensington prepared for the day, mostly by slumping out of bed and putting her clothes back on. Halfway through pulling on a boot, she was interrupted by a thumping knock at the door, which was immediately followed by a plasma discharge and a muffled curse. Curious now, she grabbed her sidearm and hustled over to the door with the curious limp of one who has only gotten around to putting on half their shoes. Tabbing open the door, she leapt out into the open, aiming her pistol at the figure on her doorstep.

"Uh, hi," said The Boss, their voice distorted by the radsuit's breather unit.

Kinzie looked askance at this apparition. The Boss went on to sheepishly explain, "I can't beat your security system."

"That is what it's there for," she replied.

"I was gonna give you the Back to the Future treatment, I AM DARTH VADER FROM THE PLANET VULCAN and all that, but I couldn't get in or get the overhead speakers to start playing Van Halen. I didn't think you were going to be awake and...," The Boss continued, glancing down at Kinzie's one-shoe, one-sock situation, starting to fiddle with the clasp holding their helmet on, "...mostly dressed."

Kinzie lowered her pistol and shrugged. "Sleep's a necessary evil. I have things to do. What do you want, other than to bother me, apparently?"

The Boss took hold of her hood and lifted it off, shaking out a long, wavy, blue-and-blonde-streaked head of hair. They let the hood drop to the floor of the hallway, then began to unzip the suit itself. "I've been thinking---in before 'I doubt it'---this Zinjai guy, do you buy what he says about not being able to save Earth?"

Kinzie quickly choked back her reflexive "I doubt it" and waved The Boss in over the threshold as she returned to her bed to obtain her other boot. The room looked much the same as it had the last time The Boss had come by, the leader of the Saints noting the sex swing over here, the box of dildos over there. The ginger hacker rubbed the lenses of her glasses in a fold of her hoodie contemplatively. "I mean...we can definitely fold spacetime and travel into the past, and Zinyak did so, bringing things forward in time, back to the present...but the chances that we cause an absolutely universe-ending paradox seem absurdly high if we try dragging an entire planet through a wormhole, even if we could keep everyone inside alive for the duration..."

The Boss quirked a tiny bit of a smile, pulling a file up on a datapad and handing it over. "...which is why I'm thinking we hop on over to the center of the galaxy and steal The Paradox Crystal."

Kinzie took the pad and scanned the file, looking at the cloudy black spire and mentally translating the Zinnich cuneiform. "...you've got to be shitting me. This thing, what...shields you from paradox backlash? How? Why wouldn't everyone have these, I...?" she trailed off.

The Boss continued, "So the thing is, this crystal apparently exists in all times."

"That's how object permanence works. Are you a literal infant?"

The Boss ignored her. "So if we install it in our warp core, we'll be able to drag entire chunks of spacetime from one timeline to the other. The crystal can pull the earth from its time to wherever else it exists in time, which is everywhere we might want to be. We dip back into the past, bring the earth back, easy."

Kinzie wiggled her nose, pushing her glasses back up her face. "That's literally the stupidest idea I've ever heard. I want nothing to do with it."

The Boss grinned some more. "The Zin literally put a slot marked 'Put Paradox Crystal Here' on the warp core. They know what works."

Kensington's eyes widened and she hucked the datapad to the bed behind her. "Fuck, let's go, then."

**DOWNSTAIRS.**

The Boss busied herself with a plate of pancakes as Kinzie drew on a map. "So it appears that the Paradox Crystal is currently housed in the Galactic Depository orbiting Epsilon Eridani Beta. I'm thinking if we go in here and plant gravity inverters at these points---"

Someone behind Kinzie tsked at The Boss. "Tsk. So when I want to put in some planning to knock over a bank, you just ride out with Gat and shoot everyone, but when she does it..." Pierce said, plate of pancakes in hand, fork punctuating his commentary.

"It's not a bank," Kinzie replied, tersely.

**GALACTIC DEPOSITORY.  
BLOCK 0429. HABITAT THREE. STATION FIVE. EPSILON ERIDANI BETA ORBIT.  
THE NEXT DAY.**

The Boss lowered her sunglasses and stared up at the massive facade of the building in front of her. It, in fact, loomed, seemingly carved by lasers from a single block of basalt the size of an aircraft carrier.

"Kinzie, this is totally a bank."

Kinzie checked her datapad, watching the interior of the depository through remote nanoscope cameras. "It's not. They don't have any security systems at all. They don't even have doors! it's just, like, two century-old janitorial droids. They're like the vacuums in your living room. We can just walk right past them."

**TWO MINUTES LATER.**

The buzzsaw whine of at least fifty laser turrets filled the air as the horde of janitorial robots took aim at the massive stone plinth the two Saints were hiding behind and let fly, immediately carving huge furrows in the stone, which lumped moltenly to the floor. It didn't matter to the primitive security AIs in the custodial robots that it was in the way. They'd cut through it in a minute or two anyway.

"What the fuck, Kinzie!"

"It's fine! We're fine!"

"No, it's not! This was the worst idea!"

"It was your idea!"

"My idea would have involved not dying to floor vacuums on steroids!"

Kinzie groaned in annoyance and began digging in her pockets.

The Boss put her head in her hands. "Welp, here we go, last few moments alive before we're lasered to death. Got any last-minute confessions?"

Kinzie switched pockets, looking for all the world like a woman whose car keys had gone missing and would probably only be found several minutes later, in the place she'd first looked. "I told you already, we're fine, I---"

The Boss cut her off, looking moderately forlorn. "I'm in love with you, by the way."

Kinzie didn't have any immediate response, beyond pressing the button on the handheld device she was holding up (that The Boss wasn't looking at).

**THE BRIDGE OF SAINTS SPACE RAIDER USS KAMASI WASHINGTON.  
MOMENTS LATER.**

The Boss, as expected, was livid, bordering on ungrateful.

"A fucking emergency teleporter? You couldn't have mentioned that earlier?"

Kinzie stood, hands on hips, glaring up at The Boss. "I'm sorry, is the fact that I was prepared in case things got out of hand now a problem?"

"It's not a problem, fuck, I just---"

Kinzie yanked The Boss several inches downward by her necktie and kissed her briefly, before lifting up and snarling, "I love you, too, so shut the fuck up, because it's freaking me out."

The Boss, at a loss for words, spread her hands in confusion.

Kinzie sighed. "I love you. And I don't _do_ love. So it's a fucking _problem_ , okay? One of my exes called me 'aromantic', which, I dunno, maybe..."

If anything, The Boss's perplexion deepened. "...they said you stink?"

Kinzie's palm struck her forehead in vexation. "Like the man said, I just don’t like motherfuckers. Haven’t met too many motherfuckers I like."

The Boss cottoned on. "You got a lotta walls."

Kinzie nodded. "So, like, we can keep talking about it, but...I need time to figure it out."

The Boss leaned back against a bulkhead and folded her arms under her bust. "So, in the meantime..."

Kinzie dropped the topic like a hot iron and got back to business. "In the meantime, we start thinking fourth-dimensionally, Marty. Why should we bother with trying to steal it from a horde of crazy germophobic robots when we can just snag it from somewhere else in history?"

The Boss grinned, snapping her fingers. "It exists in ALL TIMES, that's right! We just have to find a time it was mostly unguarded."

Kinzie nodded. "And according to this, it's been all over the place over the eons. Including on Earth a couple...three...four times. Huh."

The Boss immediately hopped into a pilot's chair and started spinning up the engines. "Nice. Where to, then?"

**PLANET GORFOSS.  
OLGORPTH SECTOR, DALLABNIKU DIRECTORATE  
27 GORF I, THE HOUR OF THE SNAKE.**

**(JANUARY 8, 1620, EARTH TIME. SATURDAY MORNING.)**

Kinzie and The Boss rode the narrow mountain path towards the temple on the backs of their rented taenkabirds, continuing their conversation.

"So, Kinzie, when was the first time you, like, 'noticed' me? You know, gave you pants-feelings?"

"Ugh, you are a literal teenager."

"For me, it was that leather getup you had on in the Zin simulation. Hoodies generally keep me away, but that's something else."

"That's what they're supposed to do, but, hrm. I think it was earlier for me. Probably when I saw your ass in those vinyl pants you wore for Murderbrawl XXXI. That's probably part of why I stayed on." She flicked the reins and continued musing: "How much did that little notch in the front make you have to shav---"

"Waxed. First time, too. Hurt like absolute shit. I like the smoothness, but I---hey, what's that noise?"

They tugged on the reins, halting their birds. Kinzie cocked her head. "Yeah, I think I hear it...what..." She looked up the trail suddenly, eyes wide. "Rockslide!" she yelled, thumbing the emergency recall. The birds, suddenly bereft of their burdens, simply hopped off the ledge and flapped their way down as the boulder trap wiped the entire passage out.

**BUTTE COUNTY BANK.  
BELLE FOURCHE, SOUTH DAKOTA.  
JUNE 28TH, 1897.**

"All's I'm saying, Kinz, is that the Saints at least can handle a job like this one without leaving a pile of corpses behind. Those goons in the Payday gang? Their idea of taking a bank quietly is hucking frag grenades into the lobby until there's no-one left to call the cooooooooh fuck."

Kinzie was about to ask what the hell that meant when she caught a glimpse of what The Boss was looking at out the window. "I make...five of them? Crap."

The Boss sighed. "I guess we're not the only ones who wanted to rob this bank today. We'd better get out of here before...yaknow. Time Paradox and all that."

Kinzie sighed as well, thumbing the big red button.

**EN ROUTE TO ALPHA CENTAURI.**

Kinzie slumped on the battered couch someone had kindly thought to salvage and place on this ship as it cruised through hyperwarpspace, retorting with palpable frustration, "You think we'd make a good couple because we're both kinky? Since when are you kinky? Your idea of kink is, like, sucking someone's toes or fucking someone at a party while your ex is in the next room. Have you ever even heard of hypnotwinning? Biosculpt play? Shame Cube?!"

**ON THE WAY BACK FROM ALPHA CENTAURI.**

"I mean, what, I've redyed my hair like thirty different colors at this point, half the time I'm running around in a leather jacket, pencil skirt and workboots, I am clearly some kind of queer fashion icon," The Boss mused, half-draped across the couch, while Kinzie sat cross-legged on the floor.

"That was on my mind when we first met; once we got past the whole 'is she here to kill me' thing, I immediately pegged your look as 'Amazonian Utena.' The pink hair might be due for a comeback," Kinzie said, tapping away on a laptop.

"Hell, I helped you move in back in Steelport, I think that legally makes us gay-married in some states."

Kinzie shot The Boss A Look.

"Well, it will matter, once we've got the crystal."

Kinzie nodded and got back to work.

**A DARKENED BEDROOM.**

On their knees atop the bedspread, forehead to forehead, both beginning to sweat with the exertion, moaning into each others' ears, fingers dragging across slickened skin, teeth dragging along collarbones, each with a hand in the other's underwear, furiously driving their partner towards trembling orgasm.

**TWO MINUTES LATER.  
(VERSAILLES, FRANCE, EARTH; MARCH 22, 1748. FRIDAY AFTERNOON.)**

The Boss, discovering it is very hard to get a shirt back over your head and bust as you flee shouting, running and shooting French Royal Guardsmen.

Kinzie, slightly more dressed, but struggling to replace the battery in the emergency recall device. "Well, how was I supposed to know Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour were going to swing by to fuck right then?!" she shouted back at The Boss.

**BOYO'S DINER.  
PLANET PLAXOS.  
UNCIVIL SECTOR, CIVILIZED QUADRANT.  
ON THE LUNCHTIME RUSH.**

The sign on the door with the slot for putting numbers in said "It has been [1,347] cycles since we have last seen Chef Boyo." That didn't stop the wait for tables from still being fifteen to twenty centons, like in every restaurant.

Kinzie picked at her twice-pluuzed rangaloo rolls (with the hot-like-heat sauce) idly while The Boss chomped down on the kichid-egg-migas portion of her Full Spanglish.

"So did you ever let a Zin into your inner sanctum?" The Boss asked, waving her cropsticks at Kinzie playfully.

"Of course I did. Alien biology is fascinating. Of course with a, forgive the term, warrior race like the Zin, they're not as sexually liberated as most humans, let alone someone like myself. He couldn't keep up." Kinzie popped a a roll in her mouth and squinted at a hot-sauce-induced tear. "You?" she asked, volleying the question back.

"Not yet," The Boss admitted, "But I do definitely think about those fingers sometimes."

Kinzie smirked. "Thus exposing your latent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fetish?"

The Boss snerked, halfway into a bite of changrizo. "No, you dork."

Kinzie tried another tack. "Warcraft trolls?"

The Boss coughed, the rogue sausage having made a run for her lungs when she tried to laugh. "Gnnnnnnk!" she horked, thumping the table heavily twice with a fist before swallowing heavily and breaking up into giggles, admonishing her lunch partner, "oh, god, shut up!"

**KIDIRI HIGHLANDS.  
REMMIT VELDT.  
PLANET OONORAS.  
CORE SYSTEMS OCTET.  
THE ETERNAL NOW.**

Kinzie consulted her tablet one last time, comparing the photo of the ancient stone tablet to the tower standing before the pair of Saints.

It was built from carved greenish stones, rising sturdily some twenty stories into the air, the only thing of any height to be found this early summer evening in the empty grasslands of the eastern provinces.

"So this is where it is?" asked The Boss.

Kinzie nodded. "According to these writings, Oho'al spent centuries on the top floor of this tower contemplating the mystery of the crystal, not moving, eating, sleeping, anything."

The Boss pulled a bit of a long face. "That seems kinda impossible."

Kinzie shrugged. "Well, they're already the greatest space-wizard known to history by this point, thinking about universe-shaking mysteries is already kind of their thing."

The Boss nodded. "Fair enough." She hefted a heavy ion cannon over her shoulder and Kinzie sighed.

"Please do not kill the alien space-wizard."

"Hey, don't start none, won't be none."

Kinzie sighed again.

The marble tower was sparsely appointed from the view of the lowest floor, with rough-cut stone lintels and sills outlining large, square windows and a similarly-proportioned doorway---far too massive for human usage, unless perhaps you were trying to herd an entire basketball team into the tower simultaneously while having them stand on each other's shoulders.

The Saints started in and up the spiraling stair, passing through floors containing ritual rooms, rooms of tapestries with arcane sigils, an indoor garden, a massive dining room, and others whose uses neither hacker nor criminal mastermind had any conception of.

The humming sound started as they passed to the thirty-eighth level. The pale violet glow followed soon after, as Kinzie poked her head above the twenty-fourth floor.

Kinzie shook her head to try and clear it. "That's what I said."

The Boss agreed. "I thought we already came through here. Also, I think something weird is happening here with how time works."

Kinzie nodded. "I think something weird is happening here with how time works."

The Boss came up behind her and laid an arm over her shoulders. "It's like deja vu for places I've never been before."

Kinzie frowned. "I could swear we've been here already."

Eventually, though neither of them could have described how long they went up and down stairs, they arrived at the heart of the sound and vision, the meditation chamber of the Eternal Space Wizard Oho'al Oleron. The room was richly appointed in rainbow washes of silks and tapestries, with black stone circles set into the white marble floor. Of course, very little of the room's decoration made any impact on the two women as they were more distracted by the white-robed-and-hooded figure hovering just behind the stone altar in the center of the chamber, chained to the walls with golden threads of sorcery, held in a web of azure structures of mathematics, encircled by forty-seven minor demons of seeing, tendrils of glowing white emerging from their floppy sleeves and the lower hem of their robe to entangle them further with all of these as arcane sparks in red and purple raced from point to point and a verdant wind gently blew the whole architecture through its slow rotations.

It's easy to miss the details when you're looking at something like this, so it took several more moments before Kinzie let out a tiny squeal of delight and hustled fully into the room, heading for the altar, The Boss hot on her heels. Oho'al continued to hover placidly.

The altar was the size of a decent writing desk, and was bare but for what could only be The Paradox Crystal.

The Boss took a more leisurely stroll into the chamber, leveling her cannon at the wizard, just in case. The pair looked down at the unprepossessing stone on the table, a naturally-formed spire of cloudy crystal, easily small enough to be held in one hand. They looked at each other and shrugged, each reaching for it, only to stop when a third voice interrupted.

"I was wondering when this was going to happen," replied the soft, high voice of the space wizard, who had descended slightly to sit in thin air at eye level with the two interlopers, who each took a step back. The voice did not appear to come from the hooded figure themselves, but from echoes in every corner of the (circular) room. "Oh, don't look so surprised, you two. If I'm a historical enough figure that you can find information about me despite never having even heard of this planet before, I'd better be wizard enough to know about the Third Street Saints. And, please, you can put the gun down."

The Boss, to her credit (or not, perhaps) did not lower the gun, replying merely, "Nah."

Oho'al Oleron sighed, shaking their lowered head, slightly. "Whatever blows your hair back, Chief."

Kinzie nudged her glasses up her nose. "I imagine if you know all that, you know we're here to take the crystal, so we can restore our home planet."

Oleron nodded. "Of course. Again, _space wizard._ Look. I know how this ends. We're not going to get into a fight. Kinzie, pick up the crystal, see what happens."

Kinzie reached down as to pick up the stone, but once she had, the stone still sat on the altar as if untouched. But she looked into her hand, and the crystal was there, too. "What is this? An illusion? Which stone is real?" In the meantime, The Boss had tried the trick twice, and now had a Paradox Crystal in each hand.

The wizard's voice took on an amused, slightly smug tone. "Whoever translated my work after I left this place did a terrible job. You see, the stone doesn't just exist in all times---it exists in all _timelines._ It exists in the timelines you are in, where you take the stone and restore your home. It exists in the timelines where you never came here and the stone remains with me, which is why you see it on my altar."

A look of dawning understanding came upon Kinzie's face. "All the stones are real, Kensington," concluded Oleron. "You'll understand as you study the crystal and how it relates to time more and more. But one warning, especially to you, 'Boss.'"

The Boss stiffened slightly, but nodded, listening.

The space wizard was already rising back into the center of their arcane maelstrom as they intoned their final warning. "Puckish rogue you may claim to be, but there is only one way your use of this crystal will not lead to a terrible end."

The space again began to glow, the harmonics of the vibrating air forming a new chord. "Remember. When you are able: always, always be kind. Now go."

The glow became everything, and then it was not.

 **BACK ON BOARD THE K. WASHINGTON.  
** **OUTER SPACE.**  
**JUST AFTER.**

Kinzie and the Boss reappeared on the bridge of their ship, looked down at the prizes in their hands, then dove into each other's arms. Looking out at the expanse of space out the front windows, The Boss kissed Kinzie's cheek.

"Let's go be kind," she said.

**END.**

"...not moving, eating, or sleeping, my entire ass," said the space wizard---known millions of years ago as Kinzie Kensington---as she descended again from her trance and went off to her larder in search of something to snack on.

**Author's Note:**

> Hallo! There's not much to say here in the notes this time, but I appreciate the opportunity to play with these two characters, so thanks for submitting your request! Have a wonderful holiday!


End file.
